Julia Driver

This essay explores the obligations that may arise from benevolently intended interventions that go awry. The author argues that even when the intervening agent has acted with good intentions and in a non-negligent manner, she may be required to continue aid in cases where her initial intervention failed. This is surprising because it means that persons who perform supererogatory acts run the risk of incurring additional heavy obligations through no fault of their own. The author also considers deflationary accounts that run counter to her own analysis

This essay attempts to show that sophisticated consequentialism is able to accommodate the concerns that have traditionally been raised by feminist writers in ethics. Those concerns have primarily to do with the fact that consequentialism is seen as both too demanding of the individual and neglectful of the agent's special obligations to family and friends. Here, I argue that instrumental justification for partiality can be provided, for example, even though an attitude of partiality is not characterized itself in instrumental terms.

This volume of essays in honour of Philippa Foot constitutes a high quality Festschrift. There is no doubt that Philippa Foot's career is worthy of such a volume. She is one of the most influential philosophers of the past few decades and her work has given rise to, and seeded, much debate in contemporary moral philosophy. She has written on a wide variety of topics — virtue ethics, the doctrine of double effect, naturalism, and practical reasoning. The essays in this volume touch on all of these issues. They are written by such distinguished philosophers as G. E. M. Anscombe, Simon Blackburn, Rosalind Hursthouse, Anthony Kenny, Gavin Lawrence, John McDowell, Warren Quinn, David Sachs, T. M. Scanlon, Michael Thompson, David Wiggins, and Bernard Williams. They all succeed in honouring Professor Foot's work. Given space considerations, and considering the forum for this review, I will focus on those essays that are of most relevance to consequentialism.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Franklin Miller1 make a convincing case for their claim that what is wrong about killing someone is that one is putting the person in a state of universal and irreversible disability. Thus, killing in and of itself is not an additional harm for a person who has been universally and irreversibly disabled. The implications for such a view are, as they note, quite wide-ranging. Given advances in medical technology, there are individuals being kept alive now who are universally and irreversibly disabled. Not only would death not be viewed as an additional harm, but it may also be the case that the organs of such individuals should be made available to save the lives of those who are not universally and irreversibly disabled. Given how Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller spell out what universal and irreversible mean, I am in broad …

Elinor Mason has provided an account of blame and blameworthiness that is pluralistic. There are, broadly speaking, three ways in which we aptly blame -- and ordinary sense, directed at those with poor quality of the will, and then a detached sense and an extended sense, in which blame is aptly directed towards those without poor quality of the will as it is normally understood. In this essay I explore and critically discuss Mason's account. While I argue that she has identified interesting aspects of the way in which we hold people morally responsible, I disagree with certain features of the account, in particular, that ordinary blame issues in demands and that there is any deep sense in which we can simply decide to take on responsibility.

Peter Singer is well known as an ethicist who has contributed much to current debates in ethics and public policy. He has published on topics ranging from vegetarianism to famine relief to bioethics, always with something interesting to say, and often with something provocative as well. How Are We to Live? adds to Singer’s work in the area of applied, or practical, ethics. This book is not as deeply challenging as some of Singer’s earlier work. However, it is not intended for an audience composed exclusively of professional philosophers. It is written for people who feel that ethics doesn’t speak to the concern of living a full and fruitful life, who believe that ethics, at best, is too narrow to guide us in a wide spectrum of decisions, and, at worst, is for “suckers.” This sentiment is one that professional ethicists encounter all too frequently. Singer’s book does a splendid job of addressing these sorts of concerns. He does so with a light touch, without being too moralistic. It is easy to read, engaging, and will appeal to a wide audience. Thus, the book accomplishes its goals admirably.

abstract In this paper moralism is defined as the illicit use of moral considerations. Three different varieties of moralism are then discussed — moral absolutism, excessive standards and demandingness, and presenting non‐moral considerations as moral ones. Both individuals and theories can be regarded as moralistic in some of these senses. Indeed, some critics of consequentialism have regarded that theory as moralistic. The author then describes the problems associated with each sense of ‘moralism’ and how casuistry evolved to try to deal with some of these problems. The author also defends consequentialism against one charge of moralism [1].